Stella
by May a Chance
Summary: Fem!Harry is adopted by the Winsdor family along with Aly Black, her third cousin. Thought-fic


I never was good at math or science, but I'd always had one skill, one skill that I kept with me through all the years I used it.

I was born in a little village in the middle of nowhere to two people who died within a year and a half. Or that's what they told me anyways. I grew up in a quiet little orphanage an hours drive south of London. The official name was Hemingway's Home for Girls, but to anyone in the area, it was simply Hemingways. The sister orphanage was Hollister's Home for Boys, or just Hollisters.

What a joke. It was like we all went to a fancy boarding school and our parents hadn't died of various causes. Yes, the situation could have been far worse and yes, we were lucky but there had always been something missing from the situation; our parents.

Some of us girls were related. Some of them boys were related. Some of us girls were related to some of them boys. We were all from the Crawley are so it did make sense that we would have known each other in our past lives, but some of us such as myself, were from way out in the middle of nowhere.

None of the girls had ever heard of Cokeworth before I gave said small town as my place of birth. When asked where exactly it was, I didn't bother denying the fact that I had no idea and that my parents had raised me, for the year after my birth, in an even more obscure place called Godric's Hollow, based on a sign in an old photo in the only photo album I had.

It began with the black-and-white shots of my mother as a young girl with her sister. Following the older photos came clearer photos taken at a castle filled with children carrying school bags and books. My mother's long red hair tumbled down her shoulders just as mine did when I let it down. There was a boy with jet black hair in the photos and a castle reflected on a clear, dark lake. Some of the pictures were sloppy but others appeared to have been taken by a master.

As the days in the images passed, my mother grew until there was a picture with snow flurrying down and her silhouetted with her lips pressed to a boy's. He a must have been my father.

The dark-haired boy disappeared from the pictures until it was a photo of my grown mother and a dark-haired man leaning on a sign that read 'Cokeworth' with a baby, probably me, in my mother's arms. Scrawled at the bottom was a name:

Stella Olivia Evans. That was me in all my baby glory. Which wasn't much now, let alone thirteen years ago. The next and last photo was of a sign that read 'Godric's Hollow' in gold and red lettering that looked to have been painted centuries ago. Why my parents chose to live there was beyond me.

But despite being from nowhere-ville, I was related to one kid, a girl just slightly older than me who was my third cousin no-times removed if the family tree she had in her own book was correct. The names consisted of only first and middle names and a date of birth and a home town. When we were three or four, she's not that much older than me, she pulled out the book to open the page that read Stella Olivia on the tree from beneath James Charlus and Lily Marcelle. The date read 'July 31, 2002' and the home town was my own Cokeworth. She asked if that was me, pointing out herself on the tree a minute later.

'Azalea (Aly) Rue'. I had a relative.

Aly and I were lucky, really lucky. We were adopted at three. And the Winsdor Family wasn't just any family; Rose Winsdor and Markus Winsdor were from good families and already had a kid a few years older than Aly and me. He was six year old Emerson Jacob Winsdor.

When we were five, the Winsdor's picked up from their life in England and brought Em, Aly and me to the United States. Em was eight.

It was there that things got weird; Aly sent generals in the US Military cute kitten photos after finishing her homework; I read a chapter in Alice in Wonderland and recited it from memory to Aly and Em who held the book itself in their hands. Then I read the first chapter backwards. The incidents were three months apart; Aly was three months older than me.

We had all thought Aly'd be arrested for hacking into through military grade firewalls but instead the government had hired her for her amazing abilities. Three months later when Aly had been chattering away about the Alice in Wonderland incident, the government agreed that while Aly helped upgrade the firewall, I'd help develop coding.

It was pretty cool; we were both quick learners and always had been so we picked everything up pretty quickly, acting abilities included. At ten, Aly was recruited to help with a tiny deal involving spies. Apparently she'd been a great help along with Mom. The next time Aly'd been asked to do something involving more than just firewall and hacking stuff, they'd gotten both of us. We'd developed a secure network on which we were able to encode messages for a team of FBI agents undercover to bring down a big drug dealing operation in LA, where we lived. It had been hacked for a minute or two before being pushed out, but when confronted with a complicated code, the dealers had been unable to make heads or tails of it.

In reality it was a new language with no grammar rules whatsoever.

Em was always there to support us in our duty and to encourage us and to get his own good marks but he was never invited to join us, never offered to help us. Yet when we were home, he was always our protector.

Then we'd turned eleven. One July 25th, 2013 we'd received three different letters each; the first was on worn parchment with an 'H' crest, the second was on pristine white maker with the crest that read 'SAW' and the final on thick, white paper with a crest of 'WWUSA' which sounded like a bad URL code.

We'd opened the 'WWUSA' one first to find elegant lettering; Dear Ms. Potter, We at the Witches and Wizards of the United States of America are proud to inform you that you have been accepted into WWUSA. We await your reply no later than August first. Sincerely, Pestificulous Poppers. Rely address is 9991 Ohioville.

Exchanging irritated looks, we agreed that whoever had sent this was quite hopeless. Neither of us had even heard of a surname such as Potter yet here it was on a letter addressed to me.

The second with the 'H' crest had been the same lot of crap as the previous letter. The final was the only one that made any sense whatsoever, which wasn't much sense.

Dear Ms. Winsdor, My name is Siri Hunter and I am the liaison officer of your family at the Salem Academy of Witches (SAW). We understand that you have no knowledge of the magical world and we would like to arrange a visit with you in order to fully inform you of our world before you choose whether or not to accept our invitation to SAW. I will be arriving at your home in approximately 24 hours. If this time in not available, please reply immediately. Our shipping address is 0001, Matherson Avenue, Wolfen Forests, Salem. Warm regards, Siri Hunter.

And even that one sounded like a big load of crap. It took an honest-to-goodness less-than-a-minute (which there should have been a word for but wasn't according to my thorough brain search), what I like to call a lesaute (le-sowt), for me to shoot an irritated look at Aly, shrug, scribble a reply to all three and burn said replies hoping that if these people really were magical, they would understand that I had no interest whatsoever.

22 hours later, a woman named Siri Hunter knocked on the door. We slammed the door in her face which was all too much fun before packing our school bags to walk in the opposite direction to the little private school we attended on the outskirts of LA where we lived. Coincidentally, it was called Hemingway's Academy for the Gifted or just plain Hemingways.

Then our thirteenth year on planet Earth rolled 'round and disaster struck. Aly had woken up with a nasty headache at some point in October. Insisting that she was fine and taking an Advil,

Em and I had both glanced a peak at a white lock of hair that hadn't been there before; Aly's hair had been bundled up in a bun and forced under a hat not long later so neither of us bothered to ask her about it. Our sister was having a bad day so we wouldn't question. Mom and Dad certainly didn't notice in their hurry to get to their jobs so we figured it was fine and we'd talk to them that afternoon.

We each pulled out our bikes, Em had a black bike with red patterns while Aly and I had both chosen grey bikes with green vines, and began to bike the short distance to our lovely private school. It was on said bad morning when we slowed and began to walk our bikes, Em having gone off with his friend Lawrence, that things got more interesting yet.

I remember as clear as day my sister's left leg giving out beneath her and, in slow motion, I remember the terrible crunch of her head hitting the ground.

Or maybe I'm just dramatic, maybe she'd just stumbled over her shoelaces and fallen, catching herself before she'd hit her head. Or maybe she did hit her head and that's what made her pass out. Or maybe she'd just fallen over and she'd gotten up a minute later.

From there it's a blur; I think Aly fell over and hit her head before passing out but I don't remember clearly. I just knew that my sister was unconscious and probably needed help. From there I know nothing else. I guess I phoned an ambulance or something but I don't remember a thing of it.

The next thing I knew, my sister was gone and I was a mess. Over the headlines, 'Mysterious Disappearance of Aly Winsdor Baffling'; over the news channel a woman spoke, 'Thirteen year old girl missing from hospital'; on the busses, 'Amber Alert: Aly Winsdor'.

It became too much to handle, knowing that my sister had been kidnapped right from a hospital. I remember one discussion all too clearly; Em and I had wandered to school like we did every morning. We were walking our bikes through the park and we'd just made it past our halfway mark, a little water fountain in the park when we began to talk.

"Do you think she's safe?" It was Em who broke our long silence, his British accent long-since faded away.

I gave him a sad yet hopeful look. "Aly knows what she's doing. She always has. I'll bet she's off hacking some poor man's email account and gaining all his valuable secrets or something." We both knew it was just an act.

We both knew Aly wasn't off looking for secrets. We both knew she had been kidnapped and might never come back and was maybe even dead.

There, I said it. My sister could have been dead and I wouldn't have known it.

Or she could have been off in Venice and I wouldn't have known it.

It could have gone two different ways and I had no idea which path fate had decided to lead Aly down.

Confession time; I was so nervous after that conversation I spoke in Esperanto for the rest of the day. No one understood a word I said and it came crashing down on me that my sister and I were two of a kind; we were prodigies like no other.

Until the day it was I who collapsed in the park halfway to school. The last thing I remember before passing out is Em's face hovering over me filled with nothing but concern.

Then I woke up to a different yet still so familiar face hovering over me. Well, one familiar face and two unknown faces, both boys.

The largest of the faces looked like it belonged to a high school kid ready for a good game au basket. The second unfamiliar face, the smallest, looked like it belonged to a fifth grader who hadn't eaten enough in months. And the final face hovering right over my own was that of a girl who looked treize et petite but it was a face that I did indeed know.

Aly. And even as I sit dying, I known yet another language, that of my dear, dear sister.


End file.
